A Pragmatist Research Agenda for Employing Psychological Heuristics in Construction: Context, Design, Artificial Intelligence, and Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Psychological heuristics are formal models of decision making relying on core psychological capacities, such as perception, attention, memory, language, emotion regulation, and social cognition. They function under conditions of limited information, which is processed using simple computations that are easy to understand, apply, and explain. Under conditions characterized byKnightian uncertainty, psychological heuristics embrace the “less-is-more” effect and have demonstrated to achieve equal and better performance in inference problems than optimality methods. Despite these salient performance outcomes, the construction and engineering management literature remains silent on their role in decision making. Filling this void, in this article, we use a narrative review to address the following research question:How can psychological heuristics be effectively used for decision making under uncertainty in construction? A research agenda comprising four interconnected themes integral to decision making under uncertainty is examined to deal with this question: understanding the context; developing and designing heuristics; the integration of heuristics with artificial intelligence; and performance evaluation. Underpinning these themes is the methodological lens of pragmatism and mixed method research design to foster the actualities of psychological heuristics in real-world situations. Thus, we aim to stimulate new lines of inquiry and the development of a repertoire of decision-making strategies of the mind that can be employed in construction where uncertainty reigns.

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